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his best to break social barriers so that people from varying
backgrounds could mingle easily. He used to spend hours
with me and would say, “Kalam, I want you to develop so
that you are on par with the highly educated people of the
big cities.”
One day, he invited me to his home for a meal. His wife
was horrified at the idea of a Muslim boy being invited to
dine in her ritually pure kitchen. She refused to serve me in
her kitchen. Sivasubramania Iyer was not perturbed, nor did
he get angry with his wife, but instead, served me with his
own hands and sat down beside me to eat his meal. His
wife watched us from behind the kitchen door. I wondered
whether she had observed any difference in the way I ate
rice, drank water or cleaned the floor after the meal. When I
was leaving his house, Sivasubramania Iyer invited me to
join him for dinner again the next weekend. Observing my
hesitation, he told me not to get upset, saying, “Once you
decide to change the system, such problems have to be
confronted.” When I visited his house the next week,
Sivasubramania Iyer’s wife took me inside her kitchen and
served me food with her own hands.
Then the Second World War was over and India’s
freedom was imminent. “Indians will build their own India,”
declared Gandhiji. The whole country was filled with an
unprecedented optimism. I asked my father’s permission to
leave Rameswaram and study at the district headquarters
in Ramanathapuram.
He told me as if thinking aloud, “Abul! I know you have
to go away to grow. Does the seagull not fly across the Sun,
alone and without a nest? You must forego your longing for
the land of your memories to move into the dwelling place
of your greater desires; our love will not bind you nor will our
needs hold you.” He quoted Khalil Gibran to my hesitant
mother, “Your children are not your children. They are the
sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come
through you but not from you. You may give them your love
but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts.”
He took me and my three brothers to the mosque and
recited the prayer Al Fatiha from the Holy Qur’an. As he put
me on the train at Rameswaram station he said, “This
island may be housing your body but not your soul. Your
soul dwells in the house of tomorrow which none of us at
Rameswaram can visit, not even in our dreams. May God
bless you, my child!”
Samsuddin and Ahmed Jallaluddin travelled with me to
Ramanathapuram to enrol me in Schwartz High School,
and to arrange for my boarding there. Somehow, I did not
take to the new setting. The town of Ramanathapuram was
a thriving, factious town of some fifty thousand people, but
the coherence and harmony of Rameswaram was absent. I
missed my home and grabbed every opportunity to visit
Rameswaram. The pull of educational opportunities at
Ramanathapuram was not strong enough to nullify the
attraction of poli, a South Indian sweet my mother made. In
fact, she used to prepare twelve distinctly different varieties
of it, bringing out the flavour of every single ingredient used
in the best possible combinations.
Despite my homesickness, I was determined to come
to terms with the new environment because I knew my
father had invested great hopes in my success. My father
visualized me as a Collector in the making and I thought it
my duty to realise my father’s dream, although I desperately
missed the familiarity, security and comforts of
Rameswaram.
Jallaluddin used to speak to me about the power of